Observer News: Mistakes are easy to make when preparing your plants for winter
Mistakes are easy to make when preparing your plants for winter
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Penny_Fletcher on 20/11/2013 17:51:00
By PENNY FLETCHER
Sometimes, putting a cover over your plants during cold weather can harm them
more than it helps. Crowding pots the too close together on a porch or garage so
they can help warm each other can also do damage.
If you do it wrong, that is.
“Many people think they can put plastic right on top of their plants and
protect them,” said Nicole Pinson from the Florida Yards and Neighborhoods
Program of the Hillsborough County Extension Service. “But if the plastic is
laid right on the plants, touching them, it can actually conduct the cold right
into the plants and kill them.”
Using plastic or tarps is all right if they are staked up so they have a
“greenhouse effect.” But even then, they need to be uncovered as soon as
daylight comes so the sun can warm them again.
Blankets, cardboard boxes, anything layered is better, Pinson added. Putting a
heat bulb under the blanket — being careful not to touch it so it doesn’t
catch fire — helps, too.
Getting ready now by collecting boxes and blankets, before any freezes hit, is a
good idea.
Plants in containers are especially vulnerable, she said.
“Bring them inside the garage if you can, or group them together and cover
them with blankets, but be sure to get them back into the sunshine in the
morning even if it’s still cold because they need the sunlight. And don’t
put them so close their leaves crowd.”
Gail Hubbell agrees, and adds that one of the worst things people can do when
preparing for winter is to allow any green fronds to be cut off their palm
trees.
Hubbell has been in the nursery business in Ruskin for 27 years, but Hubbell’s
Nursery on College Avenue in Ruskin has been in the South County area more than
50 years.
Gail Hubbell’s husband David’s father started the business in St. Petersburg
but was recruited by Sun City Center’s first developer, Del E. Webb, when Webb
began landscaping Sun City Center. Webb started with cow pasture and had to get
someone who knew the land.
“David’s dad started on this side of the Bay with Sun City Center, and
we’ve been in business here ever since,” Gail Hubbell said.
This definitely makes the Hubbells experts.
“Landscapers go around telling people they need to ‘hurricane cut’ their
palms, and also trim them before winter,” she said in an interview Nov. 15.
“But actually, this is the worst thing you can do. In fact, you can kill the
palms by doing this.”
In a separate interview, Pinson agreed.
“The palms need every bit of energy they can get to make it through the
winter. The fronds provide the nutrients to the bud that grows directly out of
the top. If a palm has 20 or 30 fronds and 15 are cut off, that’s taking away
the ability to store all those nutrients from the soil and sunlight,” Hubbell
said. “There should never be green fronds or palm leaves being taken to the
dump. Only a completely brown frond should ever be removed. Taking green fronds
off is like taking away 1,500 calories of a person’s 2,000 calorie diet.”
Hubbell said to picture the face of a clock. “Think of where the 9 and the 3
are. Fronds need to stay above that level, never be cut from above it.”
Winter is hard on container plants, too.
Leaves of large canopy plants (especially in containers) may be damaged if they
are pushed together to share warmth for too long a time, Pinson added.
“Crowding is bad.”
Bringing them into the garage for the night is good, but returning them to the
outside in the morning is crucial. Another tip offered by Pinson is to make sure
plants are watered well before the cold night temperature hits.
Another thing we can do to prepare for winter is to begin composting for next
year’s garden, Pinson said. This is something that can be done year-round.
Not just leaves and grass and other yard waste, but coffee grounds, vegetable
peels and cores, leftover foods, except for meat, make really good compost.
“It’s a form of double-recycling,” Pinson said. “It replenishes the
earth, while diminishing what goes in the trash.”
Keeping a bowl with a lid for this purpose and dumping it outside where the
garden is expected to be grown, or around existing plants, or just making a
compost pile to use at a later date, are all methods encouraged by the
extension service.
“We teach composting and a lot of other things in cooperation with the
University of Florida,” Pinson said.
To find out more about these or other extension classes, visit
hillsborough.ifas.ufl.edu/lawn_and_garden/lg_calendar.shtml.